


Tightly Woven

by berriesandchampange



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Big Brother Dean Winchester, But this is about dean, Dean on his lonesome, Other, Sam Winchester at Stanford, Short & Sweet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-16
Updated: 2016-03-16
Packaged: 2018-05-27 02:01:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6265261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/berriesandchampange/pseuds/berriesandchampange
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sammy's run off to college, and Dean misses him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tightly Woven

Dean was alone.  
Not that he hadn’t been alone before, but there always had been some prospect of his Dad and Sammy coming back in half an hour, from the grocery store, or the shipping bay, or wherever else they got to. No. This time Dean was well and truly alone.  
He felt terrible, of course, about leaving his dad in the old mechanics shop they had all helped run since the day they were born, but he had felt worse about letting Sammy run off to Stanford.  
He had done everything he could, but he couldn’t stop his father's yelling, Sam’s yelling, the plate breaking on the wall, Sam running upstairs and packing his bag, Sam slipping out of the window in the middle of the night.  
He couldn’t stop it, but he could fix it. He was going to make things right.  
He slung his scuffed duffle down off the weirdly yellow sheets of the bed onto the threadbare motel carpet. His calloused fingers flipped the stubborn light switch and he flopped down onto the lumpy mattress, the springs creaking and bed frame heaving to accommodate him. It was so unlike his bed from home, the only bed he had ever slept in. He wondered who had slept here before him. An old man, with nowhere else to go? A single mother and her child, no money for a better room? A prostitute, hoping to earn enough to feed her another night? And now, a boy searching for his brother.  
Dean stared at the ceiling. There was a weird stain there, shaped like a pair of shoes. Or a car, if he turned his head far enough to the right.  
It was late and he should be sleeping, but there was a dripping in the bathroom, and faraway cars rushing along the highway, and there was no hum from the refrigerator and creak of the house next door like he was used to.  
He missed home. He missed Sam. He missed his dad. It had been hard not to tell him before, to leave only a note saying he was going to find his brother.  
It had been hard to forgive Sam, the way he just up and left for Stanford. But it had been hard to forgive his dad too. It had been hard to forgive himself.  
His family was like a tightly woven cloth, Dean decided. Everything they faced they had faced as a family, until Sammy had gone and pulled his thread out, and the fabric had unravelled into John Winchester sitting alone at the dinner table, nothing but two scraps of paper to tell him where his boys were; Dean alone in a motel, unable to sleep from the problems that filled his brain; and Sammy who had likely woven himself into a new life at college.  
Dean fell into a restless sleep, wondering how Sam was doing.  
When he woke, Dean missed his home. This bed wasn't the same. These walls weren't the same. He rolled out of the bed and onto the rough carpet. It took him 2 and a half steps to get to the cheaply furnished bathroom. He splashed some cold water from the leaky tap onto his face. He wanted to wake up again, to wake up in a different room, and a different bed, and Sammy. The unwashed mirror reflected his tired face, his eyes that didn’t look quite the same as before. Goddammit, he wasn’t the same as before. If only he could have stopped Sam, have stopped his dad from yelling, hell, at least stayed with his father. But here he was, not enough courage to stay with his dad, and not enough courage to carry on. He hated the face that stared back at him in the mirror.  
His hand that had clenched the side of the grimy sink balled into a fist at his side and then slammed into the mirror with a deafening crash. The mirror shattered and shards of glass clinked down into the sink. It hurt, but it felt good. It was like with that one crash of the mirror his mind had snapped to a decision. Sammy could hold his own at Stanford. He’d worked hard enough to get himself the scholarship there, and the last thing he probably wanted was for his big brother to come barging in there, trying to pull him home. His father, however, needed somebody there. Dean could help run the shop, and after a while maybe they would get used to the empty seat at the dinner table where Sammy once sat. After all, Dean knew Sammy would know he loved him no matter what.

**Author's Note:**

> So I wrote this for an English assignment, and it was 180 words over, and I just couldn't seem to cut it down. I'm terrible at writing.


End file.
